


Like a Lullaby

by SweetScentences



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Sharing a Bed, making the goths cuddle, post pool scene, spooning: simpler in theory than it is in practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-04-03 17:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetScentences/pseuds/SweetScentences
Summary: Not much hugging happened in the Ninth. That doesn't mean Gideon isn't willing to try it out.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 41
Kudos: 320





	Like a Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> This is not beta read because I'm a fool riding this hyper-fixation while it lasts. Please let me know if there are any glaringly obvious flaws and feel free to come scream about this book with me on tumblr at sweetscentences.
> 
> The basic premise of this was what if they talked _even more_ after the pool scene.
> 
> Thank you for reading this nonsense <3

Gideon hoped to fall asleep quickly after she settled into bed. God knew she was tired enough to. But she found, for once, she couldn’t stop thinking. 

She was being forced to re-examine everything about her childhood. She was being forced to re-examine everything about Harrow. Neither of these were a particularly pleasant experience. 

An old question popped into Gideon’s head. She figured that now that they were talking, _ really _ talking, she could ask about it. 

“Hey, Harrow,” she called, listening for Harrow’s answering shuffle on the bed. “Back before everything went, you know, _even_ _more_ to shit, why did you tense up like that when I hugged you? You knew I wasn’t going to hurt you, right?”

In the moment, the reaction had been amusing enough to make up for Gideon’s embarrassment at her lack of impulse control. But combined with Harrow’s reaction when Gideon hugged her in the pool… 

It was weird. 

“I didn’t think you were going to hurt me,” Harrow said, her voice tight and low. 

Gideon recognized the warning in her tone. She also chose to ignore it. 

“Then why did you act like you’ve never been hugged before?” she asked incredulously. 

Sure, the Ninth wasn’t exactly a friendly or cuddly place, but even _ Gideon _ had been hugged. A few persistent nuns had ignored the Reverend Mother and Father’s cues and continued squeezing Gideon and pinching her cheeks until she was seven and found biting them could get them to stop. Ortus sometimes worked himself up into such a state with his poetry that he would grab the nearest body (dead _ or _ alive) and drag them into a weeping hug. Gideon had been caught in that trap exactly four times. 

Now that she thought about it, Gideon only had one pleasant experience being embraced growing up. When she was thirteen she’d fallen disgustingly ill, but still decided a fever so bad she could barely move wasn’t a good enough reason to miss training with Aiglamene. Unsurprisingly, she passed out. When she woke up, Aiglamene looked relieved, and wrapped her boney arms around Gideon to haul her upright against a wall. Gideon wouldn’t have considered it a hug if it weren’t for the way Aiglamene’s hand brushed Gideon’s cheek as she pulled away. 

Harrow was being concerningly quiet. Gideon’s stomach sank. She sat upright in her weird cavalier’s bed. Harrow didn’t look at Gideon. When she heard her sit up, she curled further in on herself. 

She made an impressively lonely figure on the massive bed. 

“Harrow,” Gideon breathed, “_ please _ tell me you’ve been hugged before.” 

Harrow still didn’t look up. Instead, she found a way to make herself smaller, wrapping an arm around her knees and pulling them to her chest. 

“My mother carried me when I was an infant,” she said, as if that was even remotely the same thing. 

“She didn’t- none of them, _ none _ of your family, or your retainers, or even _ fucking Crux _ ever hugged you?” Gideon’s mouth was hanging open. Harrow was too occupied by her stare down with her knees to insult her for it. 

“As if Crux would ever _ dare _ to put his hands on me,” she laughed- a sharp, bitter sound. “As for my parents… they didn’t want me growing as soft and spoiled as Ortus. They made it clear to my family I wasn’t to be touched like that.” 

Gideon really hadn’t thought she could loathe the Revered Mother and Father any more, but every new thing Harrow told her turned her stomach. 

“I think- I think they felt too guilty,” Harrow admitted, taking a shaking breath. 

Gideon’s hands had curled into fists. She fought to unwind them. “They felt too guilty to _ hug you _?” she hissed. 

“I was as much of a reminder of their crime as you were, Griddle.” Harrow laughed again, humorless and awful. Gideon was getting sick of the sound. 

Before she realized what she was doing, Gideon was climbing out of her bed and shuffling over to Harrow’s. Harrow didn’t look up until Gideon snagged the end of the sheet to slide beneath it. 

“Griddle, what are you _ doing _?” she snarled, black eyes wide and shining as she watched Gideon shimmy closer to her. 

It wasn’t the most graceful move Gideon had ever made. She threw any remaining dignity out the window when Harrow caught onto what Gideon’s plan was, and tried to thrash her way out the other side of the bed. Unfortunately for her, Gideon was quicker and had a reach _ just _ long enough to snag Harrow and drag her back to meet Gideon half way. 

Harrow made a horrible, bitten-off sound when her back met Gideon’s chest. She unceremoniously shoved one of her boney little elbows into Gideon’s gut. Gideon wheezed, but pointedly ignored Harrow and fought to get comfortable. Her magazines had made spooning seem an awful lot simpler than it was turning out to be. Unsure of what to do with her free arm, she settled on stealing one of Harrow’s pillows and tucking it under that. Then she pulled Harrow even closer and curled around her. 

Harrowhark was stiffer than a corpse, which wasn’t particularly pleasant, but at least she was warm. One of her skeletal hands brushed Gideon’s wrist, before latching onto it. 

Surprisingly, she didn’t tug Gideon’s arm off of her. 

“What are you doing?” she asked again, her voice quiet and shaking. 

Gideon Nav didn’t know what to do with a _ vulnerable _ Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She had never encountered it before tonight. Harrow was sharp, and vicious, and _ cruel _. She wasn’t a fragile girl who wept over the crime of her birth and didn’t know what to do when someone hugged her. 

So much of what Gideon had always known to be true about Harrow was so completely wrong.

“What does it look like I’m doing, my melancholy mistress?” Gideon asked, burying that thought and her face in the curly black mess of Harrow’s hair. 

“Gideon, _ please _.” Harrow’s voice cracked the way it had in the pool, right before she’d started crying. Gideon’s arm tightened around her. 

“I’m _ hugging _ you, Harrow,” Gideon said. 

After a long, tense minute, Harrow relaxed just the slightest bit in her hold. Gideon let out a relieved breath. 

Harrow’s hand unlatched from Gideon’s wrist. It didn’t go far, settling over Gideon’s hand. Then, Harrow carefully wove her boney fingers together with Gideon’s. 

They were close enough that Harrow had to feel Gideon’s heart pounding against her back. 

“_ Why _?” Harrow asked, her breath fanning out across their joined hands. 

“Because I want to,” Gideon said, matter of factly, and pulled away just enough to press a kiss to the back of Harrow’s pale neck. 

Her skin was warm and still salty from the pool. Gideon let her lips linger there for a long, timeless moment. She pulled away, but not before setting a second kiss on one of Harrow’s knobby vertebrae. 

Harrow shook, ever so slightly, at the first kiss. A small, breathless gasp slipped past her lips with the second. 

Gideon wanted to kiss her again. Wanted to kiss every inch of her neck, then pull her collar aside to run kisses down her shoulder. To run her hands across Harrow’s ribs and draw as many new sounds out of her as she could. To curl over her and kiss her brow, her pointed chin, her cheeks, _ her lips _ . The impulse, the _ want _, nearly swallowed her. 

Instead, Gideon grit her teeth, ignored the twisting in her gut, the pounding of her heart, and buried her face back in Harrow’s curls. 

As much as she wanted to, it would be too much for both of them. Just being held was almost more than Harrow knew what to do with, and in truth it was for Gideon too. 

Harrow squeezed her hand sharply, and Gideon let out a shaking breath. This was unfamiliar territory for both of them. 

“Griddle,” Harrow started, before shaking her head slightly, her hair tickling Gideon’s nose. “Gideon… why? _ Really _, why?” 

“I don’t know,” Gideon told her. “I didn’t exactly plan this out. Maybe because we both deserve to be hugged?” 

“I don’t-“

Harrow's impending self-loathing monologue was cut off with a wheeze. Gideon had squeezed her so sharply she’d pushed all the air out of her bony little body. 

“_ Gideon _!” Harrow snarled, her nails digging into Gideon’s hand so hard they nearly drew blood. 

Gideon laughed. It was easier to deal with Harrow’s anger than whatever weird _ tender _ thing had grown between them. Part of Gideon wanted to lean into it, to kiss Harrow again just to see what would happen. Another part of her wanted launch Harrow out of the bed and kill the mood completely. 

She settled on loosening her arm, and letting Harrow relax back against her. 

“I’m not arguing about _ deserving _ and _ worth _ any more tonight,” Gideon breathed. “Can you just- accept that this is happening and go to sleep?”

Harrow huffed, but she didn’t start a fight. That was a lucky thing, because if she did Gideon really _would_ kick her out of the bed. 

She was silent for a long while, tense and still awake. But eventually, Gideon felt her breathing even out into something slow. 

It was surprisingly soothing- the rhythmic movement of Harrow’s back against Gideon’s chest, the soft sound of her breathing, the warmth of her body, the weight of her against Gideon. 

Their hands, wound together. 

Gideon had never heard a lullaby before. But she imagined, as she slid slowly into sleep, that this was what they felt like.


End file.
